Michael Biberstein was born in Switzerland, studied in the USA and has lived in Portugal since 1978. In this piece, the artist employs a language that would become one of his hallmarks – the juxtaposition of monochrome, black surfaces, with shapes that suggest elements of the landscape – clouds, sky, mountain peaks – depending on what we want to see. Monochrome, the use of a single colour, is the ostensible minimalist “limit” of painting; it appears alongside landscape images that may either suggest Chinese painting or the aesthetic of the sublime and German romanticism. In this way Biberstein calls upon an array of issues that cut across the history of art in the 20th century.

The title of the piece also deserves some explanation. On the one hand, “K” refers to a studio Biberstein had in Switzerland in the 1990s, an enormous, abandoned steel plant named “Klaus”; and “5” is in the title because this was the fifth work painted in that space. On the other hand, the second part of the title, in brackets, relates to two ideas which the artist calls upon for his work: they may be landscapes which we can enter, or walls we dash against; in this case, this painting represents “3” steps towards the wall (the painter uses the word “attractor” to refer to the wall).

The circumstances of creation, the act of painting itself, are thus just as important as the great historical issues of painting, or simply of humanity, for, as Biberstein says, «ultimately, this is about death»*, which, in essence, is the same thing as saying that it is about life.

Isabel Carlos
May 2010

* Michael Biberstein, quoted by Otto Neumaier in Michael Biberstein, Lisbon, CAM – Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 1995, p. 35.